Aftermath Preserved for Spring Use. 51 



food, and no sheep on my farm did better. This was 

 above three per acre, and for two months the former had 

 their lambs at their side. I had rouen on the better 

 part of my farm, apparently of near double the value. 



The winter of 1794-95 was uncommonly severe, frost 

 being of the hardest and longest ever known. His 

 experience under these circumstances was that rouen 

 was as safely to be relied on as in the milder winters 

 during which it was tried. Young complains of turnips 

 as being expensive and liable to be injured by frost, and 

 he might have added that, unless unusual precautions 

 are taken, sheep swallow grit and earth with them, 

 which are both injurious * The Earl of Exeter, we are 

 told, sells all his turuips to his neighbours to be fed 

 with sheep, and relies on his rouen, and has known no 

 redwater, or other distemper, in his flock since he 

 has adopted this practice. In his paper on the subject, 

 Arthur Young gives numerous evidences of the value 

 of rouen. In Tweeddale, on the sheep farms, part of 

 the pasture is hained (preserved), and also in other parts 

 of Scotland, Mr. Young says that he has depended upon 

 it principally for the support of 200 sheep. The grass 

 is much more early and productive in spring if, after 

 mowing, no stock is turned in till spring. The dry 

 herbage shelters the young grass shoots in spring, and 

 thus promotes their growth. Rouen was also adopted 

 in Hei'efordshire. A Mr. Knight is quoted as observing 

 that, if leaves are eaten off shortly after mowing, the 

 roots are deprived of their nourishment, and the plants 

 consequently vegetate weakly in the ensuing spring. 

 Aftermath left to rot on the ground is a good prepara- 

 tion for the next crop of hay. 



But in one part of the country the practice of saving 

 growing grass for future use was much further extended, 



* A tenant farmer once took one of my grass parks, and sent in 

 some prime hoggs, and some of them sickened and died. My 

 shepherd examined the stomach of one of them, and found grit in it, 

 which had been swallowed when eating turnips which had not been 

 sufficiently cleaned. 



